Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

[Animavore]

Pummelling the depths of scumbaggery.

The proposed White House budget would cut hundreds of jobs from the National Weather Service, including forecasters, after one of the worst hurricane seasons on record.

The Trump administration budget proposal would slash the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by more than $1 billion next year, forcing the agency to cut about 8 percent of jobs. The weather service, part of NOAA, would lose 355 jobs, including 248 forecasting positions.

Weather forecasters are alarmed. Dan Sobien, president of the weather service labor union, warned that the plan had sapped morale.

“We can’t take any more cuts and still do the job that the American public needs us to do,” Sobien told The Washington Post on Monday. “There simply will not be the staff available on duty to issue the forecasts and warnings upon which the country depends.”

Government forecasters were faced with a particularly active hurricane season in 2017 that, alongside other natural disasters, caused a record of more than $300 billion in damage. NOAA said in January the country was hit with 16 separate billion-dollar disasters last year, including hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, and a string of wildfires in California.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tr ... 06751fb110

No prizes for guessing why they are doing this.

Hack! Spit!

[Animavore]

Trickle down, me bollox.

[Forty Two]

The National Weather Service isn't necessary, and we could do fine without its billion dollar annual expense. We have private weather services and they are better than the NWS. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, the National Weather Service was twelve hours behind AccuWeather in predicting that New Orleans would be affected. Unlike the NWS, AccuWeather provides precise hour-by-hour storm predictions, one of the reasons private industry supports them. In 2010, the NWS failed to predict major flooding in Nashville because it miscalculated the rate at which water was releasing from dams there. The NWS continued to rely on bad information, even after forecasters knew the data were inaccurate.

Forecast Watch has found that the National Weather Service predictions of snow and rain have an error rate 20 percent higher than their private alternatives. “All private forecasting companies did much better than the National Weather Service,” their report concludes. https://www.forecastwatch.com/docs/Shor ... racy_2007/ In 2008, Forecast Watch found that the NWS’s temperature predictions were worse than every private-sector competitor including the Weather Channel, Intellicast, and Weather Underground. Even NWS’s online ZIP code search for weather reports is in some cases totally inaccurate, giving reports for areas hundreds of miles away.

The NWS activities should be privatized -- Britain’s Meteorological Office is already a self-funding (Trading Fund within the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), operating on a commercial basis), commercial entity, and the British government even considered selling it to a private corporation, much as the Canadian government sold its air traffic control (ATC) service to the now award-winning NavCanada. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/31/ ... r-critics/

There is no intrinsic reason why the infrastructure for this data collection function should be publicly owned, other than the fact that it is currently publicly owned.

[Animavore]

President Scumbag strikes again.

Trump’s Budget Cuts Millions Of Dollars From Gun Background Check System
This would “significantly undermine” efforts to keep firearms out of dangerous hands, gun control advocates say.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tr ... 4f31d1b770

[Tero]

The National Weather Service isn't necessary, and we could do fine without its billion dollar annual expense. We have private weather services and they are better than the NWS. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, the National Weather Service was twelve hours behind AccuWeather in predicting that New Orleans would be affected. Unlike the NWS, AccuWeather provides precise hour-by-hour storm predictions, one of the reasons private industry supports them. In 2010, the NWS failed to predict major flooding in Nashville because it miscalculated the rate at which water was releasing from dams there. The NWS continued to rely on bad information, even after forecasters knew the data were inaccurate.

Forecast Watch has found that the National Weather Service predictions of snow and rain have an error rate 20 percent higher than their private alternatives. “All private forecasting companies did much better than the National Weather Service,” their report concludes. https://www.forecastwatch.com/docs/Shor ... racy_2007/ In 2008, Forecast Watch found that the NWS’s temperature predictions were worse than every private-sector competitor including the Weather Channel, Intellicast, and Weather Underground. Even NWS’s online ZIP code search for weather reports is in some cases totally inaccurate, giving reports for areas hundreds of miles away.

The NWS activities should be privatized -- Britain’s Meteorological Office is already a self-funding (Trading Fund within the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), operating on a commercial basis), commercial entity, and the British government even considered selling it to a private corporation, much as the Canadian government sold its air traffic control (ATC) service to the now award-winning NavCanada. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/31/ ... r-critics/

There is no intrinsic reason why the infrastructure for this data collection function should be publicly owned, other than the fact that it is currently publicly owned.

You must be kidding, right? Even you could not be that stupid? Accuweather uses the federal tax funded collected data. It is all based on:

The primary network of surface weather observation stations in the United States is composed of Automated Surface Observing Systems (ASOS). The ASOS program is a joint effort of the National Weather Service (NWS), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the Department of Defense (DOD).

It’s not just reading meters. NWS maintains all these sites. They also employ people in every state. Those areas with no TV station get the warnings by short wave, run by NWS.

[Animavore]

Wow! Quoting climate denialist websites. This is how far 42 is willing to sink to support Trump. To deny science.

He's as lost as Theon Greyjoy at this point.

[Sean Hayden]

Greyjoy... his story was so disturbing

[Brian Peacock]

The National Weather Service isn't necessary, and we could do fine without its billion dollar annual expense. We have private weather services and they are better than the NWS. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, the National Weather Service was twelve hours behind AccuWeather in predicting that New Orleans would be affected. Unlike the NWS, AccuWeather provides precise hour-by-hour storm predictions, one of the reasons private industry supports them. In 2010, the NWS failed to predict major flooding in Nashville because it miscalculated the rate at which water was releasing from dams there. The NWS continued to rely on bad information, even after forecasters knew the data were inaccurate.

Forecast Watch has found that the National Weather Service predictions of snow and rain have an error rate 20 percent higher than their private alternatives. “All private forecasting companies did much better than the National Weather Service,” their report concludes. https://www.forecastwatch.com/docs/Shor ... racy_2007/ In 2008, Forecast Watch found that the NWS’s temperature predictions were worse than every private-sector competitor including the Weather Channel, Intellicast, and Weather Underground. Even NWS’s online ZIP code search for weather reports is in some cases totally inaccurate, giving reports for areas hundreds of miles away.

The NWS activities should be privatized -- Britain’s Meteorological Office is already a self-funding (Trading Fund within the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), operating on a commercial basis), commercial entity, and the British government even considered selling it to a private corporation, much as the Canadian government sold its air traffic control (ATC) service to the now award-winning NavCanada. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/31/ ... r-critics/

There is no intrinsic reason why the infrastructure for this data collection function should be publicly owned, other than the fact that it is currently publicly owned.

Where does AccuWeather get it's data from?

[Tero]

From NWS.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Gotta keep the base happy. Trump continues to pander to the Christian right:

'Trump’s Proposed Budget Brings Back Abstinence-Only Sex Ed, & All Research Shows That's A Terrible Idea'

Trump's proposed federal education budget has hit the internet, and while it's yet to be approved by Congress, there are many notable proposals in the lengthy document. However, one sentence in particular is causing an uproar on the internet — and for good reason. According to the proposal, Trump wants to reinstate abstinence-only sex education.

The budget proposal can be found on the White House's website, and on page 126, there is a call to "Reauthorize and modify Abstinence Education and the Personal Responsibility Education Program." As noted by the Atlantic, Trump is asking for $75 million for the Health and Human Services Department to fund those programs in particular. The outlet adds that this probably has something to do with Trump's June 2017 appointment of Valerie Huber, a longtime advocate of abstinence-only education.

Abstinence-only sex education has been widely denounced, especially in recent years. Basically, while abstaining from sex is effective in preventing unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, teaching adolescents to abstain from sex as opposed to teaching them how to have safe sex is often ineffective, as explained in a 2017 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health. And in a 2007 study conducted by University of Washington, researchers found that adolescents (aged 15-19) who were given "comprehensive sex education" had a lower chance of getting pregnant than those who received abstinence-only sex education or no sex education. And according to 2005 data cited by PLOS ONE, abstinence-only education and higher teenage pregnancy and birth rates are actually positively correlated with one another.

Trump's proposal that the entire country's education system revert back to abstinence-only sex education is a regressive ideology that is not prioritizing the health of the nation's adolescents.

[pErvinalia]

Must be some mistake. He's the most liberal President since Genghis Khan.

[JimC]

Must be some mistake. He's the most liberal President since Genghis Khan.

...who got elected on the "Make Mongolia Great Again" platform...

[Seabass]

More on the McDougal affair:

TRUMP TALKED ABOUT ‘BIG BLACK DICK’ AND OFFENDED PLAYBOY MODEL, ENDING AFFAIR, REPORT CLAIMS

Donald Trump’s alleged affair with a former Playboy model more than a decade ago reportedly came to an end over guilt and some questionable comments made by the would-be Republican president.

Karen McDougal, 1998’s Playmate of the Year, had a nine-month-long affair with the New York billionaire that ended around April 2007 after she began feeling guilty about the tryst, according to the New Yorker’s report published Friday morning citing multiple unnamed sources. Another factor in the alleged relationship ending, according to the report, was that Trump said a friend of hers liked “the big black dick” when a relationship with an African-American man was brought up in conversation.

Trump is said to have made the comment, which offended both women, while McDougal and her friend rode in his limousine to a Miss Universe pageant. Trump reportedly also discussed how attractive McDougal's friend was and the size of her breasts.

McDougal is said to have told Trump that her mother disapproved of him, to which Trump called McDougal’s mother an “old hag.”

continued...

[JimC]

You guys sure know how to pick classy leaders...

[Woodbutcher]

The fucker is screwed now. He will be running around his WH bedroom in his white undies:
NEW YORK (AP) — Stormy Daniels, the porn star whom Donald Trump’s attorney acknowledges paying $130,000 just before Election Day, believes she is now free to discuss an alleged sexual encounter with the man who is now president, her manager told The Associated Press Wednesday.

At the same time, developments in the bizarre case are fueling questions about whether such a payment could violate federal campaign finance laws.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, believes that Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, invalidated a non-disclosure agreement after two news stories were published Tuesday: one in which Cohen told The New York Times he made the six-figure payment with his personal funds, and another in the Daily Beast, which reported that Cohen was shopping a book proposal that would touch on Daniels’ story, said the manager, Gina Rodriguez.

“Everything is off now, and Stormy is going to tell her story,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said her client will soon announce how and when she will tell her story publicly. The celebrity website The Blast first reported the contention that Cohen’s comments freed Clifford from her non-disclosure agreement.

No wonder she's pissed. She's gonna owe some back taxes now for sure.